TIMBER
Solo Exhibition at Velvet Da Vinci Gallery, San Francisco, March 2016
TIMBER is about wood… and about falling, clearing, emptiness, and starting something new.
My studio is piled with wood. A lot of it I’ve gathered from the scrap bins of the furniture shops in my neighborhood, some I’ve pilfered from construction sites, and I often pick up pieces from the street. My favorite bits come from friends who know what I’m up to and save things for me, from precious places, attics, things being torn down, even an old ship. I love responding to the pieces as they come in, and the stories they come with, from the forest to my door.
The most recent additions to the pile came from my own house — over the past year we’ve spent our weekends making space: pulling down ceilings, taking out beams, pulling out all kinds of mysteriously constructed shelves and fixtures, and piling it all up in the garage. For a long time I left it there, feeling like it was almost too much to respond to — and then one day I took a piece to the studio, put it on the band saw and started cutting it up. Right away I felt something resolving, some circle closing, and a huge sense of relief at the idea of my own experience, all the strain, work, worry, and so much history in that house before us, going through a band saw blade to become something totally fresh, different, and uncomplicated by the past.
TIMBER keeps going through my mind as I watch the wood transform, break, absorb color, smooth down or splinter off, showing its structure and its weak points. Everything changes, and everything that falls away makes room for something new.
